The Week in Review: August 13-19

Last week was pretty productive, at least in the crafty sense. I worked on oodles and oodles of projects. I have a collection of deadlines looming and must get my act in gear! Plush You, Flist, five things, coloriffic and work stuff all jumbling around my head. I had to make a list and focus on one thing at a time. Of course I ended up doing three things at a time, it breaks up the monotony.

So, last week I hung out with the Mama to be. We prepped her classroom for her sub and chow downed at a divey burger place. Tuesday was a crafty day. I worked on projects for the shop. Wednesday I surprised the mister at work for lunch and we pseudo-picnic-ed near a tar seep. Thursday was a grand chatty day with the Caffeine Fiend. We planned to go to Ikea which we did eventually do but somehow we ended up chatty cathys for a long long time as we savored some maple frosted banana bread at the Corner Bakery in Burbank. Friday was spent worrying about all my deadlines and Saturday was a painty work day, a granny visit with cookies supplied from The Great American Bake Sale topped off by dinner with friends. Yesterday the mister had the car so I hung out at home and worked on big versions of star monsters and foo foo bunnies for Plush You. The inspiration finally hit when I opened a package of ribbon from a swap I had arranged with the dear fiodecores. Sooooo many lovely ribbons fluttered out of the package, I swooned!

Today I have more crafting and errands to run. This week is a pseudo-vacation week. We are headed out to Laguna for the Pageant of the Masters. Then we will hang out by the beach and/or the pool and of course meet up with a couple of flickr folks! I can't wait! Hope you all have a splendid week!

Photobooth Friday: Anniversary

Last Sunday, the mister and I traveled downtown on the subway to celebrate our first meeting five years ago. We went to Grand Central Market for not so veggie friendly Tortas at Tacos Tumbras a Tomas and then we got back on the subway to go to Union Station where we caught the Gold Line and traveled to South Pasadena for a root beer float visit at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy. I had never been to the pharmacy so I of course had EXPECTATIONS and while it is far from lacking, I expected more. It's a classic soda fountain people! Do you really need to sell all that Elvis and Betty Boop stuff? I'll admit they did have some nifty oddball-perfect-for me toys and they had a few glass canisters of retro candy but all I could think of was let me have a go at it, I could make it so, so, so much more nifty! For reals! Enough though, the root beer floats were pretty amazing! HUGE scoops of classic vanilla fitted to the top of a frosty mug with a gap between the ice cream and the root beer so that as the ice cream drips and melts into the soda, the fizz forms and gets all frothy. SWEET! The small stretch of South Pasadena where the train station is is super cute also. Tiny little shops and a couple of antique stores line the street. There's a small museum of sorts that screens outdoor movies on a sheet tacked to it's wall and it has such a nice home town feeling. Ya gotta love the fact that if it weren't for the threat of the freeway expansion (which has been going on for decades) there wouldn't be tiny shops and too expensive homes still in the area. Funny how things work out sometimes.

After out floats we hopped back onto the train and returned to Union Station where we scouted out the photobooth and hoped that it worked and that it liked our beyond wrinkled dollars. We were in luck! This booth had a $2 credit so all we needed to do was pop in a buck and go for it. Mr. A-go-go decided that we would alternate having any expression but his finger in my ear cracked me up and I couldn't remain straight faced.


The color on the strip is nice and crisp. Inside the booth however was a sign full of "Nos". Who would have thunk it....a photobooth with restrictions...


Anywhoo....we're still having big time DSL problems. Now we are being told it isn't Earthlink but Covad, the company that hosts the service-y stuff. Either way I am frustrated. I want to catch up on blogginess and do some research for secret stuff. A girl can only watch so many movies, embroider so many pillows and go to so many doctor's appointments before she goes stir crazy!

Happy Photobooth Friday folks! Don't forget to check out the Flickr Pool and Ms. Hula's loverly links and such.

Chalkboard Memories

The other day I traveled down to schoolsville with the Soon-To-Be-Mama Bean to prep her classroom for her sub. Her first grade class sits amidst a Mondrian inspired box of a school. The doors were a vibrant yellow and a portion of one wall matched my living room…sonic green. There was a rainbow grid rug front and center and everything was so new and shiny, including the white boards. White boards? Ya gotta love advancement. Mama Bean threw a 10 pack of dry erase markers onto a desk and their happy colored caps made me swoon. How fun it must be to write a lesson so full of color and pizazz yet it made me think about my college classes and their lack of the classic blackboard…or green board. I felt all nostalgic and immediately thought of Ellen Tebbits as she ferociously clapped erasers in a silent competition with Austine her once best friend. It reminded me of how thrilling it was when Mrs. Sasada, my fourth grade teacher would pull out the colored chalk and let us select a color to write a word on the board. My left-handed penmanship always sloped every-which-way leaving a shadow of pink chalk across my palm. Oh how I loved the texture and cake like quality of the markings across the pine green of the board.

When I was 5 years old, my granny taught me how to draw stars on my own private chalkboard that hung in my pink girlie bedroom, the one I once shared with my sister and her hippo collection before my Dad took her away. Granny got the board for me and it was hung on a wee stretch of wall between my bedroom door and the closet that I was sure Frankenstein’s monster would come out of some night. I remember the sound of the chalk, classic white, as we drew up, down, left, right, and down again, over and over and over. There were stars all over the place. Later, I have no idea how much later, I would steal away the candy colored chalk to color a ballerina in a coloring book when my Mamos took my crayons away. I remember huddling on the floor on the far side of my bed, belly pressed against the stale scratchy buffalo-like shag carpeting, scribbling in defiance as angry tears rolled down my face. I remember thinking; “Take that! You told me I couldn’t color but I am!” I felt so wicked. I think it was the first time I was “in trouble” and it was the first time I was defiant. I don’t really remember any other moments like this as a child with my mother. I do remember moments like this as a young adult with a not so good-for-me boyfriend but that’s a story for another time.

Standing on my tip-toes as I stapled sky blue paper to the wall for the Mama-To-Be’s bulletin board I could recall many grade school memories. Mostly they consisted of the the wonky lighting, playing Heads Up, Seven Up, blowing bubbles in my chocolate milk, and printing on that fabulous grayish paper with the light blue dotted lines. But most prominent in my memories are the many blackboards I gazed upon with faint memories of math problems and the staccato of the chalk as it struck the board. White boards may have taken over but I am so very grateful for my memories, for Ellen and for whoever it was who invented chalkboard paint!

The Week in Review

A couple of days later...it's already old news.

Our internet is out. Has been since Sunday. the DSL simply won't work and the nifty folk at Earthlink have no clue. I'm kinda cranky about it all. I'm using my old friend, Dial-up right now so I am multitasking up a storm cuz it takes mawd-awful forever! Netflix has also screwed up and my nice system of a movie every other day has gone all wonky and I now have NO movies AND it seems my Moo sticker order has gone missing. Whine! Whine! Whine!

Last week was busy. There was work and visiting and faux-jitos to be sipped. The mister and I traveled on the train to downtown for tortas and then hopped on the gold line for some good old timey float fun at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy. We hung out in the garden and visited with granny and the Mama-a-go-go. I had cupcakes with Ander, Zaza and their Sherpa (aka The Caffeine Fiend) and I also hung out with the soon-to-be Mama Bean. I took MamaMidwifery down to get her haircut by the fabulous SoManyIdeas and then we spent too much monry on cloths for fall. It was a fun and nifty sort of week.

This week would be more fun if I could wile away many hours online. Instead I am reading and stitch, stitch, stiching up a storm. Today I get to go to the girlie doc and the heat has gone up into the 100's. This week should be interesting.

No week in review....

....yet.

The A-go-go household sadly has no internet service at this time. Darn you Earthlink! I'm borrowing MamaMidwifery's computer for the moment so I have no purdy pictures for you to gaze upon. It is hot out and I have been a crafty lady. New Pictures coming soon...I hope!

Quick, here's some eye candy:

Blackberries from our garden! Super SWEEEEEET!

Photobooth Friday: Seven

This is from a strip taken in the fall of 2000. My life was so different then. Aspirations of craftiness shadowed my thoughts but mostly I huddled and read chick lit on the sofa. I fell in love with Gilmore Girls. I wandered around swap meets alone. I bought my produce at The Farmer's Market. I cried. A lot. I felt alone.

This Sunday, the mister and I are heading out for Rootbeer Floats in honor of our first "date". We met online. Yuppers. We met online and were so, so, so tired of stupid people that we decided to lay it all out on the table and I proposed we meet for a float. I asked if we could talk and see. I asked if when our floats were finished if we could be honest and say 1 of three things.

1. Hey, I like you let's do this again.
2. Hey, you're cool but...
3. Oh my mawd quick take your clothes off!

So we sat and we talked and we talked and we walked and at the end I said with a smile "Hey, have a nice life..." His eyes flashed panic and I squeezed him "only joking" and we decide that we could be friends. Six months later he came to my birthday party. One week later we went on a real, real date of beach walking, family stories, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! and a proclamation of "I like you" followed by a sweet and simple kiss. Two years later we jumped off the fountain and here we are now, five years later.

Seven years ago I had no idea I needed all that alone time to really figure out me. I had no idea that two years later I would meet the mister. I had no idea I would be living the crafty life and I had no idea I could be so happy.